Durandal
77 reviews liked by Durandal
SWAT 4
2005
So above and beyond what a tactical police shooter would reasonably need to have in so many different areas that you wonder how it even came to be. SWAT 4 may sit at the top of the very narrow category of most anxiety-inducing simultaneous first and second person shooters with needlessly detailed environmental storytelling, but it’s led me to a much broader, more general thought – for how saturated and longstanding a genre it is, how much has what you can do with a shooter really been explored?
A few things about it bring this question to mind, but the main one for me’s its morale system. Each enemy and civilian has a different level of morale which affects how likely they are to surrender, pretend to surrender before pulling some kind of stunt or be nakedly noncompliant whenever you and your squad shout at them. By themselves, these kinds of reactions go a long way toward making it so that the player can never guess what’ll happen when they open any given door, but what takes this system to the next level is the sheer amount of factors which can affect it; whether they’re a group of trained gunman or a single inexperienced gangbanger, whether they’ve been stunned with some form of nonlethal attack, whether there are any hostages for them to take advantage of or hostiles to point you in the direction of, how many of you there are versus how many of them, how much damage they’ve sustained to each of their limbs and, my favourite, surprising them with warning shots. I’d never realised until playing this that hitting or missing a target in a shooter doesn’t necessarily have to be a dichotomy between success or failure – here, the latter can also be a tool for intimidation when Officer Backloggd User’s vocal chords aren’t cutting it alone. Firing a shotgun near someone’s feet to twist what’d normally be a failure state into something potentially advantageous extends past the fantasy of feeling like a Michael Mann character and gets the mind wondering about the uncapitalised potential of not just this genre, but others too. Why, for instance, do RPGs still often limit us to dialogue boxes labelled (Intimidate) or whatever when a far more organic implementation of that sort of interaction’s right here?
This sort of unpredictability which causes each attempt at the same level to play out differently every time’s a specialty of SWAT 4. Choosing different entry points coupled with NPCs’ semi-randomised spawns contribute a fair amount to this too, especially when specific characters are part of the mission’s objectives in some way, though the fact that the aforementioned limb-based damage system also applies to you and your squad plays a large role as well. While the extent to which this game wants you to take it slow’s immediately felt in the pairing of its relatively low movement speed and how harshly guns’ crosshairs widen, it becomes even more apparent when you’ve got an injured leg, head or arm. Suddenly, you find yourself even more hesitant to attempt to follow a fleeing suspect through a series of doors they’re shutting behind them, and whatever strategies you had in mind when selecting your long-range equipment have been scuppered by your diminished accuracy. If it sounds restrictive, don’t worry, because it can open up about as many avenues of play as it can close; one example I particularly enjoyed involved clearing a mission which heavily encourages you to use nonlethal weaponry by instead aiming for unarmoured limbs with 9mm FMJ rounds, since it’s easier to skirt around score penalties by incapacitating hostiles rather than killing them.
Although there’s an easy comparison to be made in terms of the replayability of individual encounters with its contemporary F.E.A.R., down to how heavily this stems from the AI’s dynamic behaviours, there’s another, less expected parallel in how thickly it lays on all things atmospheric. Breaching a two-storey room filled with explosive canisters and over half a dozen heavily armed death cultists is nerve-wracking enough, then it decides to hit you with a scene like this just moments after. It’d be easy to think of moments like this or a much earlier, loose equivalent of VTMB’s Ocean House Hotel as borderline genre pivots, but they’re more tonally synergistic than they seem at first. This is a game in which you die in two clean hits regardless of difficulty, so much as taking your eye off a bodycam for a second can prove to be fatal and, as noted above, you can never fully anticipate what’s going to greet you on the other side of a door, so it makes sense to ensure that the player can never anticipate what’s up next on a conceptual level in addition to a mechanical one, as well as to occasionally dial up the horror and exacerbate the uneasiness that average Joes with Uzis are already so good at instilling.
Irrational’s prior experience with horror isn’t the only instance of their ancestry rearing its head in the least likely of places, either. If you weren’t aware that they originated by splintering off from Looking Glass, having played one of the first two Thief games prior to this will probably clue you in, because SWAT 4’s incomplete, often hand-drawn, hastily annotated maps are straight out of those. You can only ever make a rough mental approximation of the layout of wherever you’re about to raid because of it, and chances are it’ll have geographical changes, potential hazards or other objectives they can’t possibly account for. It’s a small but brilliant touch which makes every eruption of overlapping GET DOWNs and WHERE’S MY GODDAMN LAWYERs mixed with gunfire all the more hectic as you’re inevitably forced to piece together your own whereabouts in the thick of it, usually while juggling your own perspective with that of a squadmate’s bodycam or a sniper feed to boot.
Despite how spur-of-the-moment all of this makes it sound and how many different ingredients are packed into it, up to and including some of Eric Brosius’ funkiest work, SWAT 4’s really a game of exceptionally singular focus; as the objective menu puts it, restoring order to chaos. It’s felt even in the size of its levels, which are just right for how many moving parts they each have and the number of ways in which those parts can be manipulated – you can charge me on account of lying if I told you that it’s always fun hunting down the last remaining suspect regardless, but it is always intense, and in general the most minor of blemishes on what’s otherwise one of many attestations to the fact that we’d probably be grand if games had just stopped progressing past what they could do in 2005.
Keep your cool, fiddle with your squadmates’ equipment and make regular use of the command menu to breach whatever obstacles are between you and giving this game a try, boss.
A few things about it bring this question to mind, but the main one for me’s its morale system. Each enemy and civilian has a different level of morale which affects how likely they are to surrender, pretend to surrender before pulling some kind of stunt or be nakedly noncompliant whenever you and your squad shout at them. By themselves, these kinds of reactions go a long way toward making it so that the player can never guess what’ll happen when they open any given door, but what takes this system to the next level is the sheer amount of factors which can affect it; whether they’re a group of trained gunman or a single inexperienced gangbanger, whether they’ve been stunned with some form of nonlethal attack, whether there are any hostages for them to take advantage of or hostiles to point you in the direction of, how many of you there are versus how many of them, how much damage they’ve sustained to each of their limbs and, my favourite, surprising them with warning shots. I’d never realised until playing this that hitting or missing a target in a shooter doesn’t necessarily have to be a dichotomy between success or failure – here, the latter can also be a tool for intimidation when Officer Backloggd User’s vocal chords aren’t cutting it alone. Firing a shotgun near someone’s feet to twist what’d normally be a failure state into something potentially advantageous extends past the fantasy of feeling like a Michael Mann character and gets the mind wondering about the uncapitalised potential of not just this genre, but others too. Why, for instance, do RPGs still often limit us to dialogue boxes labelled (Intimidate) or whatever when a far more organic implementation of that sort of interaction’s right here?
This sort of unpredictability which causes each attempt at the same level to play out differently every time’s a specialty of SWAT 4. Choosing different entry points coupled with NPCs’ semi-randomised spawns contribute a fair amount to this too, especially when specific characters are part of the mission’s objectives in some way, though the fact that the aforementioned limb-based damage system also applies to you and your squad plays a large role as well. While the extent to which this game wants you to take it slow’s immediately felt in the pairing of its relatively low movement speed and how harshly guns’ crosshairs widen, it becomes even more apparent when you’ve got an injured leg, head or arm. Suddenly, you find yourself even more hesitant to attempt to follow a fleeing suspect through a series of doors they’re shutting behind them, and whatever strategies you had in mind when selecting your long-range equipment have been scuppered by your diminished accuracy. If it sounds restrictive, don’t worry, because it can open up about as many avenues of play as it can close; one example I particularly enjoyed involved clearing a mission which heavily encourages you to use nonlethal weaponry by instead aiming for unarmoured limbs with 9mm FMJ rounds, since it’s easier to skirt around score penalties by incapacitating hostiles rather than killing them.
Although there’s an easy comparison to be made in terms of the replayability of individual encounters with its contemporary F.E.A.R., down to how heavily this stems from the AI’s dynamic behaviours, there’s another, less expected parallel in how thickly it lays on all things atmospheric. Breaching a two-storey room filled with explosive canisters and over half a dozen heavily armed death cultists is nerve-wracking enough, then it decides to hit you with a scene like this just moments after. It’d be easy to think of moments like this or a much earlier, loose equivalent of VTMB’s Ocean House Hotel as borderline genre pivots, but they’re more tonally synergistic than they seem at first. This is a game in which you die in two clean hits regardless of difficulty, so much as taking your eye off a bodycam for a second can prove to be fatal and, as noted above, you can never fully anticipate what’s going to greet you on the other side of a door, so it makes sense to ensure that the player can never anticipate what’s up next on a conceptual level in addition to a mechanical one, as well as to occasionally dial up the horror and exacerbate the uneasiness that average Joes with Uzis are already so good at instilling.
Irrational’s prior experience with horror isn’t the only instance of their ancestry rearing its head in the least likely of places, either. If you weren’t aware that they originated by splintering off from Looking Glass, having played one of the first two Thief games prior to this will probably clue you in, because SWAT 4’s incomplete, often hand-drawn, hastily annotated maps are straight out of those. You can only ever make a rough mental approximation of the layout of wherever you’re about to raid because of it, and chances are it’ll have geographical changes, potential hazards or other objectives they can’t possibly account for. It’s a small but brilliant touch which makes every eruption of overlapping GET DOWNs and WHERE’S MY GODDAMN LAWYERs mixed with gunfire all the more hectic as you’re inevitably forced to piece together your own whereabouts in the thick of it, usually while juggling your own perspective with that of a squadmate’s bodycam or a sniper feed to boot.
Despite how spur-of-the-moment all of this makes it sound and how many different ingredients are packed into it, up to and including some of Eric Brosius’ funkiest work, SWAT 4’s really a game of exceptionally singular focus; as the objective menu puts it, restoring order to chaos. It’s felt even in the size of its levels, which are just right for how many moving parts they each have and the number of ways in which those parts can be manipulated – you can charge me on account of lying if I told you that it’s always fun hunting down the last remaining suspect regardless, but it is always intense, and in general the most minor of blemishes on what’s otherwise one of many attestations to the fact that we’d probably be grand if games had just stopped progressing past what they could do in 2005.
Keep your cool, fiddle with your squadmates’ equipment and make regular use of the command menu to breach whatever obstacles are between you and giving this game a try, boss.
I have to confess to not be a big fan of the original Daioujou. It lacks a lot of the style and appeal the original DDP had for me. Very muted and boring colors, enemies and especially bosses look like glorified trashcans, and it lacks a lot of the imagination found in bullet patterns you see in other Ikeda games like Ketsui and Progear. Even though I'm sure it has more mechanics, it feels dumbed down and especially Black Label with its even longer combo timer doesn't keep me on the edge of my seat like Donpachi and DDP always do.
So someone looked at this and has a brilliant idea. What if we make this game again, on lower quality hardware, and put animes in it. Voila, Saidaioujou. But if I just left it at that, I'm afraid I'd give off an impression that's too positive for what this game actually feels like to play.
This game is unique in that it's the only Ikeda game that just feels really shit to play moment-by-moment. Despite the bullet count only going up from game to game. The hitbox is made bigger, and it just feels worse overall. It's hard to put my finger on it, but deaths often feel unfair to me in a way that doesn't happen in other Cave titles.
The visuals? The whole game looks similar and flat. SDOJ is going for this blue futuristic look with everything having the default Photoshop outer glow effect. Every stage looks the same to me. And the worst crime a shmup can commit? Bad explosion graphics.
The music and sounds? The crunchiest. Part of this is because of the cv1k hardware, but even other cv1k titles like Futari sound better than this. Usually developers get better at this the more familiar they get with the hardware, but somehow this is a big downgrade from Cave's previous titles. It might actually be the worst I've ever heard a game sound.
Scoring? That's fucked up too. Because it's basically impossible to break the chain if you know what you're doing, the goal now is to get that chain number as high as possible. And on stage 3 & 5, you can get the overflow glitch, where if the combo goes up high enough, you get a shitton of points for each additional hit. The world record replay doesn't even have 'splits' for the other stages and focuses on getting the overflow as fast as possible. So the one part I still like about Daioujou has been reduced even further in this game.
So while I personally thought this was a huge disappointment, if you're just here for the bullet patterns and you have an above average tolerance for the animes, it still plays like any other Ikeda game and if that's all your care about, give it a try for sure. But for me I don't think I'll ever play this again, while I can play literally any other Cave title.
So someone looked at this and has a brilliant idea. What if we make this game again, on lower quality hardware, and put animes in it. Voila, Saidaioujou. But if I just left it at that, I'm afraid I'd give off an impression that's too positive for what this game actually feels like to play.
This game is unique in that it's the only Ikeda game that just feels really shit to play moment-by-moment. Despite the bullet count only going up from game to game. The hitbox is made bigger, and it just feels worse overall. It's hard to put my finger on it, but deaths often feel unfair to me in a way that doesn't happen in other Cave titles.
The visuals? The whole game looks similar and flat. SDOJ is going for this blue futuristic look with everything having the default Photoshop outer glow effect. Every stage looks the same to me. And the worst crime a shmup can commit? Bad explosion graphics.
The music and sounds? The crunchiest. Part of this is because of the cv1k hardware, but even other cv1k titles like Futari sound better than this. Usually developers get better at this the more familiar they get with the hardware, but somehow this is a big downgrade from Cave's previous titles. It might actually be the worst I've ever heard a game sound.
Scoring? That's fucked up too. Because it's basically impossible to break the chain if you know what you're doing, the goal now is to get that chain number as high as possible. And on stage 3 & 5, you can get the overflow glitch, where if the combo goes up high enough, you get a shitton of points for each additional hit. The world record replay doesn't even have 'splits' for the other stages and focuses on getting the overflow as fast as possible. So the one part I still like about Daioujou has been reduced even further in this game.
So while I personally thought this was a huge disappointment, if you're just here for the bullet patterns and you have an above average tolerance for the animes, it still plays like any other Ikeda game and if that's all your care about, give it a try for sure. But for me I don't think I'll ever play this again, while I can play literally any other Cave title.
Desync
2017
Kind of interesting how much the space of these years were really into the sort of Tron/FC3 Blood Dragon Cyberspace. I think it's kind of "fun" in the way any cotton candy town can be appealing and enjoyable. Now on replay it hurts my eyes every so often, almost intentionally with its awful and absolutely dire random tv-crt cuts.
And that sums up the experience, awful every so often in a disappointing way. When the overall work grabs you it can be genuinely incredible, with desyncing enemies and comboing sequences together to become an absolute fast-and-furious powerhouse that demolishes through tactile precision and great understandings of your gunplay fundamentals. Things like blowing up a stage bomb to turn a few slashing enemies into projectiles that you've conveniently pushed towards an increasingly large shuriken, getting a particular bonus you set up ahead of time, to then use the new speed to rocket up another set of enemies that you then laser point-blank underneath their hides for ANOTHER bonus.
And then the encounter is already over.
What?
Yeah, the game is honestly way too forgiving, way too easy. It's so afraid of throwing particular enemy combos at you or putting too much on you that even its second boss fight will go invulnerable and just stand there staring at you while you take care of a poultry wave first. The real meat is in its aberration challenges, but those kind of pull apart having your own "sandbox" to combo enemies in favor of a pre-determined affair. Which I do personally prefer, but it means that about 3/4 of whatever setup you do with the menuing means nothing if the weapons are different.
But, when you've accustomed to the game's own rhythm, they provide the closest Desync gets to pulling you apart in a very engaging way. When these hardmode levels take away your dash and force you to tactfully make your kills to get back HP before your meter runs out. When you're playing a weird game of "keep-away" with weapons that require getting at least a bit close to do proper damage, because the enemies now decided to explode on overkill. When you've got one hit to your name and a host of smaller enemies swarming on you and there's only ONE way you can stagger them to do damage in the first place.
It all helps that at the end of the day this is a very fun frictional shooter, with devs at a midway point where they don't give a shit what you think but also graft on a rpg-your-weapon modifications because that's a thing now. It's a team that lets you be able to make the final boss a multi-enemy one of your own volition and say "deal with it", and has the least accessibility for its nauseating interface. The moniker "adult swim games" has great meaning here, and that's pretty cool.
And that sums up the experience, awful every so often in a disappointing way. When the overall work grabs you it can be genuinely incredible, with desyncing enemies and comboing sequences together to become an absolute fast-and-furious powerhouse that demolishes through tactile precision and great understandings of your gunplay fundamentals. Things like blowing up a stage bomb to turn a few slashing enemies into projectiles that you've conveniently pushed towards an increasingly large shuriken, getting a particular bonus you set up ahead of time, to then use the new speed to rocket up another set of enemies that you then laser point-blank underneath their hides for ANOTHER bonus.
And then the encounter is already over.
What?
Yeah, the game is honestly way too forgiving, way too easy. It's so afraid of throwing particular enemy combos at you or putting too much on you that even its second boss fight will go invulnerable and just stand there staring at you while you take care of a poultry wave first. The real meat is in its aberration challenges, but those kind of pull apart having your own "sandbox" to combo enemies in favor of a pre-determined affair. Which I do personally prefer, but it means that about 3/4 of whatever setup you do with the menuing means nothing if the weapons are different.
But, when you've accustomed to the game's own rhythm, they provide the closest Desync gets to pulling you apart in a very engaging way. When these hardmode levels take away your dash and force you to tactfully make your kills to get back HP before your meter runs out. When you're playing a weird game of "keep-away" with weapons that require getting at least a bit close to do proper damage, because the enemies now decided to explode on overkill. When you've got one hit to your name and a host of smaller enemies swarming on you and there's only ONE way you can stagger them to do damage in the first place.
It all helps that at the end of the day this is a very fun frictional shooter, with devs at a midway point where they don't give a shit what you think but also graft on a rpg-your-weapon modifications because that's a thing now. It's a team that lets you be able to make the final boss a multi-enemy one of your own volition and say "deal with it", and has the least accessibility for its nauseating interface. The moniker "adult swim games" has great meaning here, and that's pretty cool.
Going Down
2014
Genuinely the most creative set of fps levels I've got to experience <3
The full characteristics of cyriak videos + old-doom level design philosophy congealed into a rocking-rollercoaster of an Office Experience. Smile on my face from start to finish, from just, incredible use of space and wonderful level gimmicks. Big shoutout to the one messing with past/future, titanfall 2 could never /s /s
If anything, my only 'real' issue is that there's a lot of jumps in terms of difficulty (although a lot of the later breathing room makes sense,, some of these maps hold nothing back), as it does always make me giggle when the Hardest challenge was Well Before the halfway point for me. Then again I do feel like just experiencing this pack front-to-back helped me buff out a lot of my amateur-ness with running these maps. I feel more equipped than ever to tackle stuff like Sunlust again.
If you have even the remote interest in trying out a Doom WAD, I think this is the best place to start, just so you can experience the true 9-5 workerman perspective.
The full characteristics of cyriak videos + old-doom level design philosophy congealed into a rocking-rollercoaster of an Office Experience. Smile on my face from start to finish, from just, incredible use of space and wonderful level gimmicks. Big shoutout to the one messing with past/future, titanfall 2 could never /s /s
If anything, my only 'real' issue is that there's a lot of jumps in terms of difficulty (although a lot of the later breathing room makes sense,, some of these maps hold nothing back), as it does always make me giggle when the Hardest challenge was Well Before the halfway point for me. Then again I do feel like just experiencing this pack front-to-back helped me buff out a lot of my amateur-ness with running these maps. I feel more equipped than ever to tackle stuff like Sunlust again.
If you have even the remote interest in trying out a Doom WAD, I think this is the best place to start, just so you can experience the true 9-5 workerman perspective.
Dead Rising 2
2010
Honestly, having finally finished Dead Rising 2, it’s kind of a wash as to which of the games is better- there’s an admirable attempt to shore up some of the balancing issues of the first but it never really lands with the same force of its predecessor.
I guess the major thing is the setting itself- Fortune City feels like a fundamentally less compelling location to learn, its layout is too massive to be inviting to casually explore, and most of your objectives clustered around the eastern side and center of the map. Most crucially, it’s a location that provides less of the escapist thrill that Dead Rising 1 so neatly tapped into by giving you free reign over a shopping mall. In that, there was a great feel to window shopping for your next improvised weapon or collectible- what would you do in a zombie apocalypse?- here it’s way less interesting to run through the blur of the different casinos and exotic stores, big chunks of the map feeling redundant to explore when they offer such similar items and attractions.
It’s ostensibly made up for by the new combo weapon system, where two random items can be combined to make some freakish killing tool, but it ends up being a little flat in practice- instead of picking up a sledgehammer or an ax for their crowd control and damage, you pick up both and combine the two into one weapon that’s good for crowd control and damage, a tunnel vision setting in where you should only grab items designated with the blue “combo” icon and can safely disregard the rest.
Despite all that, its fundamental interactions are a lot stronger this time around. You’re given the same open-ended objectives of killing psychopaths and rescuing groups of survivors, but because there’s nothing so dominant as the chainsaws from DR1 (at least, that I could find) fights demand a bit more thought: of carving out enough time to actually fight them properly, and doing enough prep work in terms of weapons and healing items to successfully outlast the boss. Actually describing the process of the fights-“you have to avoid their telegraphed attacks! and find space to heal!”- is no great thing, but this simple process is something you need to engage with much more honestly, and is a consistent source of tension throughout. Even the survivors, who are so docile and durable as to remove most of the challenge of escorting them entirely, get some extra utility if you opt to use them as extra firepower on some of the tougher encounters. Doesn’t have some of the near-transcendent upsets of the original, but is able to maintain a steady pulse for the duration.
There are some other good additions to the setting as well, with inclusion of cash and the doses of the drug Zombrex serving as meaningful resources to work towards in the longer stretches of downtime, and speak to a game that nicely follows-up the chaos of the original; a national tragedy turned into a routine protocol that’s been co-opted and monetized from every angle- where the first game descended into complete anarchy, here it’s business a semi-usual, hitting up slot machines in the hopes of winning big, and agonizing over a system that makes grotesque profits on a life-saving drug. The story proper is a little dry, and Chuck with his more defined history and motivation, doesn’t fit as neatly into the role of a player avatar as Frank did, but as with the rest of the game it's bolstered by these smart background details.
A big missed opportunity that’s really going to stick with me is with the "Terror is Reality" gameshow that appears briefly in the intro and serves as an excuse for the supplemental online mode- easy to imagine how it could’ve been interwoven with the rest the game, serving as an easy justification to flood the map with a new horde of adrenaline-junkie psychos in the later days, and doubly a waste given how nicely it could’ve played homage the gladiatorial setting of Dead Rising’s spiritual predecessor, Shadow of Rome. And, semi-related, but Chuck’s BMX background feels similarly underused as well, the Fortune City strip not offering a great playspace for tricks, and the big, climatic-feeling setpiece where you chase after a train coming far too early in the story. Would be a much better lead-in to the finale than the repeated fetch quest in overtime mode.
Still floored that the best climax to any of these games is in the Case Zero DLC, where you’re pulled away to help save another father-daughter pair with only minutes to spare before your own race through a quarantine checkpoint. Ties together all its themes and honors the mechanical identity of the series in a way no other Dead Rising game manages to.
I guess the major thing is the setting itself- Fortune City feels like a fundamentally less compelling location to learn, its layout is too massive to be inviting to casually explore, and most of your objectives clustered around the eastern side and center of the map. Most crucially, it’s a location that provides less of the escapist thrill that Dead Rising 1 so neatly tapped into by giving you free reign over a shopping mall. In that, there was a great feel to window shopping for your next improvised weapon or collectible- what would you do in a zombie apocalypse?- here it’s way less interesting to run through the blur of the different casinos and exotic stores, big chunks of the map feeling redundant to explore when they offer such similar items and attractions.
It’s ostensibly made up for by the new combo weapon system, where two random items can be combined to make some freakish killing tool, but it ends up being a little flat in practice- instead of picking up a sledgehammer or an ax for their crowd control and damage, you pick up both and combine the two into one weapon that’s good for crowd control and damage, a tunnel vision setting in where you should only grab items designated with the blue “combo” icon and can safely disregard the rest.
Despite all that, its fundamental interactions are a lot stronger this time around. You’re given the same open-ended objectives of killing psychopaths and rescuing groups of survivors, but because there’s nothing so dominant as the chainsaws from DR1 (at least, that I could find) fights demand a bit more thought: of carving out enough time to actually fight them properly, and doing enough prep work in terms of weapons and healing items to successfully outlast the boss. Actually describing the process of the fights-“you have to avoid their telegraphed attacks! and find space to heal!”- is no great thing, but this simple process is something you need to engage with much more honestly, and is a consistent source of tension throughout. Even the survivors, who are so docile and durable as to remove most of the challenge of escorting them entirely, get some extra utility if you opt to use them as extra firepower on some of the tougher encounters. Doesn’t have some of the near-transcendent upsets of the original, but is able to maintain a steady pulse for the duration.
There are some other good additions to the setting as well, with inclusion of cash and the doses of the drug Zombrex serving as meaningful resources to work towards in the longer stretches of downtime, and speak to a game that nicely follows-up the chaos of the original; a national tragedy turned into a routine protocol that’s been co-opted and monetized from every angle- where the first game descended into complete anarchy, here it’s business a semi-usual, hitting up slot machines in the hopes of winning big, and agonizing over a system that makes grotesque profits on a life-saving drug. The story proper is a little dry, and Chuck with his more defined history and motivation, doesn’t fit as neatly into the role of a player avatar as Frank did, but as with the rest of the game it's bolstered by these smart background details.
A big missed opportunity that’s really going to stick with me is with the "Terror is Reality" gameshow that appears briefly in the intro and serves as an excuse for the supplemental online mode- easy to imagine how it could’ve been interwoven with the rest the game, serving as an easy justification to flood the map with a new horde of adrenaline-junkie psychos in the later days, and doubly a waste given how nicely it could’ve played homage the gladiatorial setting of Dead Rising’s spiritual predecessor, Shadow of Rome. And, semi-related, but Chuck’s BMX background feels similarly underused as well, the Fortune City strip not offering a great playspace for tricks, and the big, climatic-feeling setpiece where you chase after a train coming far too early in the story. Would be a much better lead-in to the finale than the repeated fetch quest in overtime mode.
Still floored that the best climax to any of these games is in the Case Zero DLC, where you’re pulled away to help save another father-daughter pair with only minutes to spare before your own race through a quarantine checkpoint. Ties together all its themes and honors the mechanical identity of the series in a way no other Dead Rising game manages to.
This was so fucking bad in every regard that I spent its runtime successfully dissociating it from Silent Hill as a concept. "Sure, Ito and Yamaoka are here, but they're hired guns nowadays anyways," I said. It plays like a terrible itch.io or Steam shovelware game, and its mix of incredibly detailed environmental assets (so much unique graffiti!) and horrifically rigged main character model whose hair is clipping through her glasses in every single cutscene in the game gives it a certain Unreal Marketplace Slop atmosphere like those as well. The inciting incident of the plot defeats its own themes and the themes of witches, generational trauma, neglect, and incidents from seven years in the past having unintended consequences make it clear this was written by a guy who wants to be Ryukishi but isn't Him. All of these are so comically bad and dumb that I was able to laugh this off, until the credits song was actually good. The guitars played the Silent Hill riff, and I had to deal with the fact that this is the future of the series. This is what I have to look forward to. I sank into the couch and have not been able to escape.
Astro's Playroom
2020
Astro’s Playroom is a wonderful experience that leaves me with far more complicated emotions than something so straightforwardly joyful really would ever want me to. It celebrates everything about Sony’s past, showering you with artifacts that lovingly render hardware ephemera in 4K glory, grounds itself in the present walking you through the innards of your new device and showing off the capabilities of the DualSense, and has no vision of the future. Jumping and moving through the levels is serviceable, and the adaptive triggers and HD rumble feel great and are used great.
The references and cosplays in this get to pretty deep cuts (I gasped at the Jumping Flash fella, then was knocked flat by the Vib Ribbon bunny, and I’m still confident I hallucinated a fucking Siren reference), and it’s delightful to see all of Sony’s back catalog get their due like this. It’s been four years and there are exactly thirteen PS5 console exclusives that could be added to a sequel - five of which have not released yet*. Nine are in established franchises, and over half are sequels or remakes. Seven are rated M for Mature, four are rated T for Teen, and two are so early in development they haven’t been rated by the ESRB. Astro’s Playroom is one of, generously, three games on this list that somebody under the age of twelve would be expected to have any fun at all with, and frankly I think 90% of the appeal would go over their heads given what a nostalgia trip this is.
The PlayStation 1, 2, and 3 are all of a certain type of utopian thinking that died with Web 1.0. Technology and art were synthesized into something for everybody, from children to adults, inventing new design grammar as they went along to create experiences that no medium could ever replicate. Sony developed, funded, and promoted scores of games that aimed at every conceivable demographic and, frequently, aimed at no demographic, believing that pushing the medium forward and creating wholly unique kinds of games creates the kind of brand identity that builds real loyalty.
Games have grown up since then, and they make games for grown-ups now, with such large budgets that true experimentation is quite difficult to justify (unless you have Hideo Kojima-sized star power and trailer editing). This one, especially, is still trying to be in the lineage of what came before, offering a utopian look into the World of PlayStation, but there is that key difference; before, each console offered a glimpse of the future, a foundation for a better tomorrow. Astro’s Playroom tries to show a utopia, but can only really believe that we already experienced it, have seen what it could offer, and have moved on towards greyer horizons.
*I am counting Rebirth here even though there are 48 hours left. Sue me.
The references and cosplays in this get to pretty deep cuts (I gasped at the Jumping Flash fella, then was knocked flat by the Vib Ribbon bunny, and I’m still confident I hallucinated a fucking Siren reference), and it’s delightful to see all of Sony’s back catalog get their due like this. It’s been four years and there are exactly thirteen PS5 console exclusives that could be added to a sequel - five of which have not released yet*. Nine are in established franchises, and over half are sequels or remakes. Seven are rated M for Mature, four are rated T for Teen, and two are so early in development they haven’t been rated by the ESRB. Astro’s Playroom is one of, generously, three games on this list that somebody under the age of twelve would be expected to have any fun at all with, and frankly I think 90% of the appeal would go over their heads given what a nostalgia trip this is.
The PlayStation 1, 2, and 3 are all of a certain type of utopian thinking that died with Web 1.0. Technology and art were synthesized into something for everybody, from children to adults, inventing new design grammar as they went along to create experiences that no medium could ever replicate. Sony developed, funded, and promoted scores of games that aimed at every conceivable demographic and, frequently, aimed at no demographic, believing that pushing the medium forward and creating wholly unique kinds of games creates the kind of brand identity that builds real loyalty.
Games have grown up since then, and they make games for grown-ups now, with such large budgets that true experimentation is quite difficult to justify (unless you have Hideo Kojima-sized star power and trailer editing). This one, especially, is still trying to be in the lineage of what came before, offering a utopian look into the World of PlayStation, but there is that key difference; before, each console offered a glimpse of the future, a foundation for a better tomorrow. Astro’s Playroom tries to show a utopia, but can only really believe that we already experienced it, have seen what it could offer, and have moved on towards greyer horizons.
*I am counting Rebirth here even though there are 48 hours left. Sue me.
It’s incredible that the Yakuza Like A Dragon series exists in this form at all. It’s really easy to discuss these games as a simple comeback story where it was saved from (Western) obscurity by grassroots efforts rallying around 0, but the fact that this insane momentum was met by RGG Studio changing the protagonist and turning it into a triple-A turn-based JRPG when the studio has no prior experience making those and conventional wisdom says the genre is utter sales poison is staggering. The last several mainline games demonstrate a remarkable and admirable disinterest in providing fans with what they expected or wanted, which is doubly impressive when the series is so iterative by nature.
Infinite Wealth iterates a lot on its predecessor, especially. It’s still a turn-based JRPG, and its changes are really, really cool. 7 felt like an experiment that had some great moments but didn’t cohere, an exemplification of the divine mathematics that underpin Dragon Quest and the travails that come when they are fucked with too much. Infinite Wealth still has a major debt to DQ (and some tinges of Chrono Trigger-style enemy shuffling) but manages to be much more unique and self-assured.
For starters, the exp curve is just phenomenally well-considered this time. Gone are the days of 7’s stupid-ass back-to-back grinds, and the scaling for exp and job levels means that it’s very easy to catch up and it can be surprisingly difficult to overlevel. In my playthrough, I kept half of the cast with their default jobs and I had the other half level a side job to 30 before swapping back to default. Team OG ended the game with job levels in the forties, and Team FAFO ended the game with a cumulative sixty job levels. I didn’t feel punished for doing either, as each job kit feels well-rounded and useful even without getting into the insane potential added by skill inheritance, but leveling side jobs felt breezy.
Beyond just the math, job design and skills got so much love - each new job has a really cool and distinct aesthetic, a really fun playstyle, and AoE attacks are way more interesting than they were 7. Circle AoEs might have one edge centered on the targeted enemy, making them finickier for selecting a full group but granting finer control over who else to include, granting damage bonuses for initiating the attack from far away, or having a long line start and end at interesting points. Cone-shaped AoEs are a lot more useful-feeling in this game when their far edge can be centered on the targeted enemy instead of the front tip. It all adds up to make lining up attacks require thought and positioning, which is really nice.
Being able to move around is the most transformational part of the combat changes, easily, but it’s part of a host of other changes that all feel a little small on their own but add up fast. There’s now a proximity bonus for basic attacks that adds in extra hits if they’re made from up close, and getting a proximity hit from behind guarantees crits. Enemy AI is aware of this, and the window to get back attacks is often fleeting at the start of the player’s turn. Having autoattacks be gimped if the party member is pathed far away or wants to hit a specific far-away enemy is frustrating, and there are three major ways to circumvent this - the simplest is to just use a skill to close the gap and do reliable damage.
They can also pick up an environmental object and use that - being able to walk up to ‘em means that they’re an actually valid part of the player’s strategy this time, and on top of their positioning benefits they're a great way to hit elemental weaknesses on people who don’t have certain skills. Otherwise, they can stand nearby another party member and do a combo attack that applies their weapon effects, does full damage at range, and gives their partner a bit of MP back on hit as well. These latter two options are useful and have a variety of obvious applications, but still come with drawbacks - if somebody’s basic attacks do knife or gun damage, then using a ground weapon will override that. Sometimes proximity attacks do way more damage than a combo strike or weapon attack, or the other person in a combo attack will hit an enemy’s elemental resistance and do almost no damage.
On top of all this, there is now a visible knockback indicator for attacks, which adds in yet another layer on top of all of this: knocking an enemy down into a party member does a lot of damage and applies their weapon effect, but knocking them into another enemy does a good bit of AoE, but knocking a large enemy into a wall scores a full knockdown other party members can exploit that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Enemies who block can have their guard broken by either doing a grab-type attack or hitting them from behind; a grab will permanently break it, a back attack will just pierce it for that one attack (and any followups while the enemy is on the ground). This is all then further compounded by the incessant shuffling and jockeying for space that enemies do - every consideration the player will make is based on reading the situation as it exists and trying to capitalize on split-second opportunities. It’s fully turn-based, but it has the pace and feel of an action fight, while retaining the positional focus, comboing, and okizeme of the series’ beat-em-up roots. It’s really fucking good.
The standout is Kiryu’s default job, which exemplifies almost all of this. Style swapping changes the properties of his basic attacks in cool ways on its own; Rush lets him make two weaker attacks per turn, giving him strong AoE or letting him score a guaranteed KO on a weakling before focusing fire on somebody else, Beast lets him do grabs without spending MP and amps up his ability to use ground weapons, and Brawler is the “vanilla” set of attacks that then let him do heat actions under the traditional series rules - be nearby a specific environmental object or otherwise fulfill certain criteria, get into proximity with them, then ace a quick QTE. All three styles get additional action game flair by having their proximity attacks have a short mash or timing prompt, which sells Kiryu both as somebody with a foot firmly planted in real-time and also as a monstrous DPS machine who feels awesome to control.
This mechanical empowerment is contrasted by his narrative role. Ichiban’s stylization as a JRPG hero sells him as somebody strengthened by his friends, but it results in a constant bitter tinge when Kiryu is in the squad. He didn’t always need help, and the character writing does a lot of really satisfying stuff with this disempowerment and reliance for such a stoic, badass lone wolf. Infinite Wealth is a game defined by dichotomies like this - obviously it’s a story split between two countries and two leads, but its themes are equally defined by parallels and mirrors. Everything ultimately comes back to purification or corruption, light and dark, and the terrors and delights of both the past and the future.
It doubles down on everything that makes these games what they are while simultaneously being confident enough to downplay so many of the series’ touchstones, giving the game a feel kinda like a concert that’s half playing the hits and half showing tracks from their next album. The first time a jacket is dramatically removed to reveal the body underneath is an unthinking act of kindness on Ichiban’s behalf, performed without any intent to fight or to show off, but when the player sees the world through Kiryu’s eyes, he can’t help but see ghosts everywhere he goes. These themes of past and future cycles make it hard to not feel a bit of metatext in this being the first full game released after Nagoshi left, and this “changing of the guard” plot can spark worries of being a retread of 7’s themes - and while certain plot elements certainly evoke it, there’s always a knowing tweak to it. 7 is a game about starting over again, of living through a storm and planting seeds for the future once the rubble’s been swept away. Infinite Wealth is more about perpetuating or changing the cycles everyone inhabits - of seeing what’s been done to them and the people before them and trying to break, fix, or continue things.
The returning characters are all well-considered and, equally importantly, most feel unexpected. Few of them feel obligatory, and those that do are given angles and elements that keep them surprising and cathartic nonetheless. Plenty of them have been chewed up and spit back out, some have come back stronger and better, some are indolent, and some lucky few stroll back into the picture feeling just as magnetic and lovable as they were all those years ago. Seeing the game take full advantage of its position as the ninth mainline title in a series stretching back almost twenty years is just as satisfying as seeing how it fantastically it intersects fantastically with the character writing writ large.
Yamai manages to escape the “Majima clone” allegations with aplomb, with a great design, fantastic presence (Koyasu the GOAT), and a satisfyingly mercurial-but-coherent role in the narrative. With the exception of Saeko, whose entire character frustratingly feels like an extension of Ichiban’s arc, literally every single party member is given a lot more to chew on this time. The gap between December 2019 and November 2023 reshuffled a lot and the status quo shifts give people unexpected and lovely positions and angles to view the world. Each little skit and friendship bingo conversation is consistently funny and interesting, and the new party members are literally all bangers. Special shout outs to the job unlock cutscenes creating the implication that Chitose has a Nico Robin-style hyperactive imagination that she does not ever share with anybody; that being said, Tomizawa and Chitose are both incredibly endearing and have a lot of great dramatic and comedic chops. Tomi gets more focus in the front half and Chitose the back, which gives her a bit of an edge in terms of immediate retrospective emotional edge, but both are excellent.
Tomizawa’s arc is tied up with the Barracudas, who are kind of a nexus of the game’s more annoying issues. The gang has a really strong and sympathetic hook that is connected to pretty venomous social commentary, but they rapidly recede from institutional relevance and, just like 7, the themes of homelessness, discrimination, and critiquing the lived effects of Japan’s comically harsh anti-yakuza laws (making it basically impossible to have a normal life certainly makes it effective for killing recruitment, but guys seeking a way out certainly have their work cut out for them…) feel under-discussed after the first act. Additionally, while Yakuza has always had a heightened tone, there are times when, regardless of the player’s tolerances, there will be moments that stretch credulity; especially when combat is done with silly costumes. Sometimes it feels weird to talk about America’s crumbling infrastructure and skyrocketing cost of life only to then beat up three Hungry Hungry Homeless.
These are issues, and they deserve mention, but simultaneously, this is the ninth mainline RGG game. Every issue raised so far has been present to some degree or another in quite literally every single game in the franchise. They’ll affect enjoyment to varying extents, of course, but… I wouldn’t get too mad at a fish for being bad at climbing trees, or at least when I’m neck-deep I’d think I know what pitfalls I'd fallen into.
For all the love heaped on the character writing, the main villains really falter, which is unexpected for this series. There’s good villains and bad villains, and certainly sometimes they contrive excuses for a final boss when punching out a businessman would be unsatisfying, but RGG Studio’s been on a hot streak for antagonists for a good while now. The antagonistic forces in this game feel more like an exercise in thematics than they are actually characters. It’s cool to see a contemporary political thriller manage to make themes of corruption, despoiling paradise, and battling against nature feel grounded within a real-world context and not feel too hacky about it, but despite their screentime they have a terminal lack of real presence or sauce. The villains’ big dramatic showcases pale in comparison to both the quiet and loud moments that accompany their underlings and frenemies. They do create good moments by contriving the protagonists into circumstances that showcase their amazing traits and even better voice actors, but the monologues and physical performances shown off could be bounced off somebody I actually give a shit about and I’d be into it even more than I am.
The cutscene direction, as implied above, is excellent. The stunt coordinator for every game since 6 cut his teeth on Mark DaCascos hood classic Drive (1997), a shitload of tokusatsu, and a little old game called Devil May Cry 3, and it lends the cutscene brawls a sense of physicality and flair that a lot of game cutscenes weirdly can’t do very well. The dramatic scenes have astonishingly good blocking and composition. For how many cutscenes are in this game, they find so many great camera angles, poses, and little vocal quavers to give far more weight to far more than one would expect.
It’s easy to gush about this game, and while it has its flaws and doesn’t always favorably stack up to past games, it feels like a chore to discuss them. Sure, Ichiban got a better moment in 7, Kiryu’s finest hour is still (regrettably) the final scene in Gaiden, and the enemy shuffling just inherently means that the combat’s chaotic, uncontrollable nature will create frustrating situations and missed attacks. It’s maybe not as focused as some other Yakuza games? (I mean, not really, lmao, the only games you might be able to argue that for are 2 and 6, and buddy, 2 is not as focused as you remember it being and 6 is just not interesting.) But at the same time, I don’t really give a fuck.
I love Yakuza most when it’s maximalist, audacious, willing to totally fuck with your expectations, and unafraid to be messy. That’s what I associate the series with and that’s what I want with each new game. That’s what I got here. I was so worried that Kiryu’s return would feel cheap, I was worried that losing Nagoshi would rob the games of an ineffable soul, and Gaiden put the fear of God in me that they would retain the godawful grinds that 7 had (if not double down.) Some mistakes it makes are certainly frustrating and I hope that one day the series will move on.
At the end of the day, it’s hard to not root for the game anyways. A game like this is so special to me. It never treats its past as a burden, and it plants one foot after another into an uncertain future with confidence. You can’t always cure stupid, but the way it endlessly strives towards a better and brighter path, unafraid to experience the sad, bitter, silly, and sweet in all its forms… it’s nice to see a game’s ethos resemble its admirable hero so much.
Infinite Wealth iterates a lot on its predecessor, especially. It’s still a turn-based JRPG, and its changes are really, really cool. 7 felt like an experiment that had some great moments but didn’t cohere, an exemplification of the divine mathematics that underpin Dragon Quest and the travails that come when they are fucked with too much. Infinite Wealth still has a major debt to DQ (and some tinges of Chrono Trigger-style enemy shuffling) but manages to be much more unique and self-assured.
For starters, the exp curve is just phenomenally well-considered this time. Gone are the days of 7’s stupid-ass back-to-back grinds, and the scaling for exp and job levels means that it’s very easy to catch up and it can be surprisingly difficult to overlevel. In my playthrough, I kept half of the cast with their default jobs and I had the other half level a side job to 30 before swapping back to default. Team OG ended the game with job levels in the forties, and Team FAFO ended the game with a cumulative sixty job levels. I didn’t feel punished for doing either, as each job kit feels well-rounded and useful even without getting into the insane potential added by skill inheritance, but leveling side jobs felt breezy.
Beyond just the math, job design and skills got so much love - each new job has a really cool and distinct aesthetic, a really fun playstyle, and AoE attacks are way more interesting than they were 7. Circle AoEs might have one edge centered on the targeted enemy, making them finickier for selecting a full group but granting finer control over who else to include, granting damage bonuses for initiating the attack from far away, or having a long line start and end at interesting points. Cone-shaped AoEs are a lot more useful-feeling in this game when their far edge can be centered on the targeted enemy instead of the front tip. It all adds up to make lining up attacks require thought and positioning, which is really nice.
Being able to move around is the most transformational part of the combat changes, easily, but it’s part of a host of other changes that all feel a little small on their own but add up fast. There’s now a proximity bonus for basic attacks that adds in extra hits if they’re made from up close, and getting a proximity hit from behind guarantees crits. Enemy AI is aware of this, and the window to get back attacks is often fleeting at the start of the player’s turn. Having autoattacks be gimped if the party member is pathed far away or wants to hit a specific far-away enemy is frustrating, and there are three major ways to circumvent this - the simplest is to just use a skill to close the gap and do reliable damage.
They can also pick up an environmental object and use that - being able to walk up to ‘em means that they’re an actually valid part of the player’s strategy this time, and on top of their positioning benefits they're a great way to hit elemental weaknesses on people who don’t have certain skills. Otherwise, they can stand nearby another party member and do a combo attack that applies their weapon effects, does full damage at range, and gives their partner a bit of MP back on hit as well. These latter two options are useful and have a variety of obvious applications, but still come with drawbacks - if somebody’s basic attacks do knife or gun damage, then using a ground weapon will override that. Sometimes proximity attacks do way more damage than a combo strike or weapon attack, or the other person in a combo attack will hit an enemy’s elemental resistance and do almost no damage.
On top of all this, there is now a visible knockback indicator for attacks, which adds in yet another layer on top of all of this: knocking an enemy down into a party member does a lot of damage and applies their weapon effect, but knocking them into another enemy does a good bit of AoE, but knocking a large enemy into a wall scores a full knockdown other party members can exploit that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Enemies who block can have their guard broken by either doing a grab-type attack or hitting them from behind; a grab will permanently break it, a back attack will just pierce it for that one attack (and any followups while the enemy is on the ground). This is all then further compounded by the incessant shuffling and jockeying for space that enemies do - every consideration the player will make is based on reading the situation as it exists and trying to capitalize on split-second opportunities. It’s fully turn-based, but it has the pace and feel of an action fight, while retaining the positional focus, comboing, and okizeme of the series’ beat-em-up roots. It’s really fucking good.
The standout is Kiryu’s default job, which exemplifies almost all of this. Style swapping changes the properties of his basic attacks in cool ways on its own; Rush lets him make two weaker attacks per turn, giving him strong AoE or letting him score a guaranteed KO on a weakling before focusing fire on somebody else, Beast lets him do grabs without spending MP and amps up his ability to use ground weapons, and Brawler is the “vanilla” set of attacks that then let him do heat actions under the traditional series rules - be nearby a specific environmental object or otherwise fulfill certain criteria, get into proximity with them, then ace a quick QTE. All three styles get additional action game flair by having their proximity attacks have a short mash or timing prompt, which sells Kiryu both as somebody with a foot firmly planted in real-time and also as a monstrous DPS machine who feels awesome to control.
This mechanical empowerment is contrasted by his narrative role. Ichiban’s stylization as a JRPG hero sells him as somebody strengthened by his friends, but it results in a constant bitter tinge when Kiryu is in the squad. He didn’t always need help, and the character writing does a lot of really satisfying stuff with this disempowerment and reliance for such a stoic, badass lone wolf. Infinite Wealth is a game defined by dichotomies like this - obviously it’s a story split between two countries and two leads, but its themes are equally defined by parallels and mirrors. Everything ultimately comes back to purification or corruption, light and dark, and the terrors and delights of both the past and the future.
It doubles down on everything that makes these games what they are while simultaneously being confident enough to downplay so many of the series’ touchstones, giving the game a feel kinda like a concert that’s half playing the hits and half showing tracks from their next album. The first time a jacket is dramatically removed to reveal the body underneath is an unthinking act of kindness on Ichiban’s behalf, performed without any intent to fight or to show off, but when the player sees the world through Kiryu’s eyes, he can’t help but see ghosts everywhere he goes. These themes of past and future cycles make it hard to not feel a bit of metatext in this being the first full game released after Nagoshi left, and this “changing of the guard” plot can spark worries of being a retread of 7’s themes - and while certain plot elements certainly evoke it, there’s always a knowing tweak to it. 7 is a game about starting over again, of living through a storm and planting seeds for the future once the rubble’s been swept away. Infinite Wealth is more about perpetuating or changing the cycles everyone inhabits - of seeing what’s been done to them and the people before them and trying to break, fix, or continue things.
The returning characters are all well-considered and, equally importantly, most feel unexpected. Few of them feel obligatory, and those that do are given angles and elements that keep them surprising and cathartic nonetheless. Plenty of them have been chewed up and spit back out, some have come back stronger and better, some are indolent, and some lucky few stroll back into the picture feeling just as magnetic and lovable as they were all those years ago. Seeing the game take full advantage of its position as the ninth mainline title in a series stretching back almost twenty years is just as satisfying as seeing how it fantastically it intersects fantastically with the character writing writ large.
Yamai manages to escape the “Majima clone” allegations with aplomb, with a great design, fantastic presence (Koyasu the GOAT), and a satisfyingly mercurial-but-coherent role in the narrative. With the exception of Saeko, whose entire character frustratingly feels like an extension of Ichiban’s arc, literally every single party member is given a lot more to chew on this time. The gap between December 2019 and November 2023 reshuffled a lot and the status quo shifts give people unexpected and lovely positions and angles to view the world. Each little skit and friendship bingo conversation is consistently funny and interesting, and the new party members are literally all bangers. Special shout outs to the job unlock cutscenes creating the implication that Chitose has a Nico Robin-style hyperactive imagination that she does not ever share with anybody; that being said, Tomizawa and Chitose are both incredibly endearing and have a lot of great dramatic and comedic chops. Tomi gets more focus in the front half and Chitose the back, which gives her a bit of an edge in terms of immediate retrospective emotional edge, but both are excellent.
Tomizawa’s arc is tied up with the Barracudas, who are kind of a nexus of the game’s more annoying issues. The gang has a really strong and sympathetic hook that is connected to pretty venomous social commentary, but they rapidly recede from institutional relevance and, just like 7, the themes of homelessness, discrimination, and critiquing the lived effects of Japan’s comically harsh anti-yakuza laws (making it basically impossible to have a normal life certainly makes it effective for killing recruitment, but guys seeking a way out certainly have their work cut out for them…) feel under-discussed after the first act. Additionally, while Yakuza has always had a heightened tone, there are times when, regardless of the player’s tolerances, there will be moments that stretch credulity; especially when combat is done with silly costumes. Sometimes it feels weird to talk about America’s crumbling infrastructure and skyrocketing cost of life only to then beat up three Hungry Hungry Homeless.
These are issues, and they deserve mention, but simultaneously, this is the ninth mainline RGG game. Every issue raised so far has been present to some degree or another in quite literally every single game in the franchise. They’ll affect enjoyment to varying extents, of course, but… I wouldn’t get too mad at a fish for being bad at climbing trees, or at least when I’m neck-deep I’d think I know what pitfalls I'd fallen into.
For all the love heaped on the character writing, the main villains really falter, which is unexpected for this series. There’s good villains and bad villains, and certainly sometimes they contrive excuses for a final boss when punching out a businessman would be unsatisfying, but RGG Studio’s been on a hot streak for antagonists for a good while now. The antagonistic forces in this game feel more like an exercise in thematics than they are actually characters. It’s cool to see a contemporary political thriller manage to make themes of corruption, despoiling paradise, and battling against nature feel grounded within a real-world context and not feel too hacky about it, but despite their screentime they have a terminal lack of real presence or sauce. The villains’ big dramatic showcases pale in comparison to both the quiet and loud moments that accompany their underlings and frenemies. They do create good moments by contriving the protagonists into circumstances that showcase their amazing traits and even better voice actors, but the monologues and physical performances shown off could be bounced off somebody I actually give a shit about and I’d be into it even more than I am.
The cutscene direction, as implied above, is excellent. The stunt coordinator for every game since 6 cut his teeth on Mark DaCascos hood classic Drive (1997), a shitload of tokusatsu, and a little old game called Devil May Cry 3, and it lends the cutscene brawls a sense of physicality and flair that a lot of game cutscenes weirdly can’t do very well. The dramatic scenes have astonishingly good blocking and composition. For how many cutscenes are in this game, they find so many great camera angles, poses, and little vocal quavers to give far more weight to far more than one would expect.
It’s easy to gush about this game, and while it has its flaws and doesn’t always favorably stack up to past games, it feels like a chore to discuss them. Sure, Ichiban got a better moment in 7, Kiryu’s finest hour is still (regrettably) the final scene in Gaiden, and the enemy shuffling just inherently means that the combat’s chaotic, uncontrollable nature will create frustrating situations and missed attacks. It’s maybe not as focused as some other Yakuza games? (I mean, not really, lmao, the only games you might be able to argue that for are 2 and 6, and buddy, 2 is not as focused as you remember it being and 6 is just not interesting.) But at the same time, I don’t really give a fuck.
I love Yakuza most when it’s maximalist, audacious, willing to totally fuck with your expectations, and unafraid to be messy. That’s what I associate the series with and that’s what I want with each new game. That’s what I got here. I was so worried that Kiryu’s return would feel cheap, I was worried that losing Nagoshi would rob the games of an ineffable soul, and Gaiden put the fear of God in me that they would retain the godawful grinds that 7 had (if not double down.) Some mistakes it makes are certainly frustrating and I hope that one day the series will move on.
At the end of the day, it’s hard to not root for the game anyways. A game like this is so special to me. It never treats its past as a burden, and it plants one foot after another into an uncertain future with confidence. You can’t always cure stupid, but the way it endlessly strives towards a better and brighter path, unafraid to experience the sad, bitter, silly, and sweet in all its forms… it’s nice to see a game’s ethos resemble its admirable hero so much.
As rumors of a follow up to one of the greatest fighting games of the century began circulating, most of the original Under Night’s player base began to wonder how the developers may handle a numbered sequel. I think I can speak for most people when I say UNICLR felt pretty much perfect (at least structurally) and making a brand new game seemed unnecessary at best and worrying at worst. What might French Bread change? Would they bend the knee to casual players and broaden its appeal through simplifications of its systems? Would they go the Type Lumina route and remix things in a such way to not shift the series’ DNA entirely while still feeling completely alien next to Current Code?
As I wandered the EVO floor on that fateful Friday morning and heard the news that the fated successor to our darling Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] was just announced and playable at that very moment, my personal anticipation and anxiety rose to all new heights. Things seemed promising from the trailer, but it was hard to judge anything for sure until I got my hands on it. After a bit of waiting in line I finally got my hands on the game, and to my absolute delight there wasn’t anything that jumped out to me. To be clear, UNICLR was never a game I was particularly great at, and as such any small tweaks and balances that did exist surely passed me by, but the foundation felt extremely similar to what I had played in the past. Somehow, it seemed like FB did the one thing no one expected but everyone secretly hoped: they didn’t fuck with the formula.
Flash forward five months, and now that I’ve had the full release of the game in my hands for the past few days I can finally confirm that this is functionally just an iterative sequel to the first game - think like how Street Fighter 4 handled its packaged versions back in the day. In fact, I’d almost liken it more to a glorified balance patch or brand new season than an entirely different game. While someone who casually messed with UNI back in the day may have yearned for more of a refresh to give the series another shot, I appreciate the restraint of the devs to understand the value of their game and not second guess themselves on old mechanics. They didn’t throw the baby out with the bath water, they didn’t make GRD easier to parse, they didn’t fix what wasn’t broken. “More of the same” is the highest compliment I can give to a game with Vorpal Cycles and Chain Shift in it.
To touch a bit on the adjustments more directly, each small new addition targets the GRD system and gives the player just a few more tools to work with and consider in a match. Things like the new forward roll aren’t terribly substantial on the face of it, but by adding more things to this towering stack of mechanics built off the same central resource, it leads to further complications in how to make the best choices in the heat of the moment. When to spend GRD for a force function, when to hold off and play defense, and when to take a chance on a shield to push the Cycle forward and build massive GRD at the risk of a Break are just a few strings of general choices you can make in a pinch, and this is only from the defending player’s perspective - this doesn’t consider how to play with GRD in neutral to even end up in these intense scrambles to begin with. For a modern comparison, in a game like Street Fighter 6 this type of complex decision-making already feels exhausting in the best ways with a lenient timer and an automatically generating central gauge to spend, so making these potentially higher risk gambles on an ever repeating 16 second timer in UNI2 feels just as if not more exciting in the heat of a match. Additions to the system could have run the risk of tipping the balance of an extremely well considered system, but at its core, UNI2 is still all about the captivating tug-of-war for GRD and the race to achieve Vorpal we all fell in love with before, just further touched up and refined in really intelligent ways.
The true meat of this package as a “sequel” really just comes in everything surrounding the game itself, which I don’t want to get too caught up in for the brevity of this blog, but it must be said that this is absolutely one of the most feature rich and complete fighting game packages ever made. Barring the exclusion of cross-play (forever and always, fuck Sony), no stone was left unturned and nothing was left behind. From intense training mode options to replay takeover functions, this game truly has every tool you could ever want and shit you probably didn’t even know you wanted, it makes you wonder how anyone can accept less complete packages from far more established developers in an era where fucking French Bread of all companies is dropping what’s unquestionably the most accessible and rich fighting game of the year.
This has always been a series I’ve held in high respects - never one I was particularly great at or could understand all the intricacies of beyond the the first layer or two, but always one I kept at the top of the stack when it came to my “casual” fighters. I’ve always been a player who loves obsessing over and gaining a strong understanding of game’s and their mechanics, so while I’m still willing to appreciate Fighting Games largely for their surface level “approachable” aspects, I always try to dig a bit deeper whenever possible. While there’s been many games over the years I’ve dreamt of attaining a greater understanding of, few have occupied as much space in my brain as Under Night. In the past it felt like a far off dream to understand the intricacies of the game, to understand something simultaneously complex and beautiful in its construction yet tragically hidden in the shadows behind passionate local communities bound by the shackles of delay-based hell. It felt impossible to slip in and catch up with everyone else in the moment, but now with the release of UNI2, I feel the spark to play and learn far more than I ever have before. For the first time in a while, the thought of going out to events big or small is alluring to me for a bit more than the usual communal aspects you tend to find with fighting games - as fun as it is to stumble into CoN5 without touching the game for months and hitting B-Tatsu in bracket without a care in the world, the drive to learn and improve for nothing more than the love of the game is something I haven’t felt as often as I’d like these days. It’s one of the many reasons I continue to show up for new fighters despite my adult life constricting the amount of time I can put into them, no other community driven games are gonna give you the same sensations as playing and learning with other community members, and that’s always a high I’ll continue to chase for the rest of my days. As much as I love falling back on old favorites, I’m so thankful companies like French Bread are still capable of lighting that spark of life within me for a new release like this. Even if you’re not into fighting games for the competitive glory or paltry prize pools of small tournaments, if you’re into the genre in literally any capacity at all, I hope this is a game that can light the spark for you too.
As I wandered the EVO floor on that fateful Friday morning and heard the news that the fated successor to our darling Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] was just announced and playable at that very moment, my personal anticipation and anxiety rose to all new heights. Things seemed promising from the trailer, but it was hard to judge anything for sure until I got my hands on it. After a bit of waiting in line I finally got my hands on the game, and to my absolute delight there wasn’t anything that jumped out to me. To be clear, UNICLR was never a game I was particularly great at, and as such any small tweaks and balances that did exist surely passed me by, but the foundation felt extremely similar to what I had played in the past. Somehow, it seemed like FB did the one thing no one expected but everyone secretly hoped: they didn’t fuck with the formula.
Flash forward five months, and now that I’ve had the full release of the game in my hands for the past few days I can finally confirm that this is functionally just an iterative sequel to the first game - think like how Street Fighter 4 handled its packaged versions back in the day. In fact, I’d almost liken it more to a glorified balance patch or brand new season than an entirely different game. While someone who casually messed with UNI back in the day may have yearned for more of a refresh to give the series another shot, I appreciate the restraint of the devs to understand the value of their game and not second guess themselves on old mechanics. They didn’t throw the baby out with the bath water, they didn’t make GRD easier to parse, they didn’t fix what wasn’t broken. “More of the same” is the highest compliment I can give to a game with Vorpal Cycles and Chain Shift in it.
To touch a bit on the adjustments more directly, each small new addition targets the GRD system and gives the player just a few more tools to work with and consider in a match. Things like the new forward roll aren’t terribly substantial on the face of it, but by adding more things to this towering stack of mechanics built off the same central resource, it leads to further complications in how to make the best choices in the heat of the moment. When to spend GRD for a force function, when to hold off and play defense, and when to take a chance on a shield to push the Cycle forward and build massive GRD at the risk of a Break are just a few strings of general choices you can make in a pinch, and this is only from the defending player’s perspective - this doesn’t consider how to play with GRD in neutral to even end up in these intense scrambles to begin with. For a modern comparison, in a game like Street Fighter 6 this type of complex decision-making already feels exhausting in the best ways with a lenient timer and an automatically generating central gauge to spend, so making these potentially higher risk gambles on an ever repeating 16 second timer in UNI2 feels just as if not more exciting in the heat of a match. Additions to the system could have run the risk of tipping the balance of an extremely well considered system, but at its core, UNI2 is still all about the captivating tug-of-war for GRD and the race to achieve Vorpal we all fell in love with before, just further touched up and refined in really intelligent ways.
The true meat of this package as a “sequel” really just comes in everything surrounding the game itself, which I don’t want to get too caught up in for the brevity of this blog, but it must be said that this is absolutely one of the most feature rich and complete fighting game packages ever made. Barring the exclusion of cross-play (forever and always, fuck Sony), no stone was left unturned and nothing was left behind. From intense training mode options to replay takeover functions, this game truly has every tool you could ever want and shit you probably didn’t even know you wanted, it makes you wonder how anyone can accept less complete packages from far more established developers in an era where fucking French Bread of all companies is dropping what’s unquestionably the most accessible and rich fighting game of the year.
This has always been a series I’ve held in high respects - never one I was particularly great at or could understand all the intricacies of beyond the the first layer or two, but always one I kept at the top of the stack when it came to my “casual” fighters. I’ve always been a player who loves obsessing over and gaining a strong understanding of game’s and their mechanics, so while I’m still willing to appreciate Fighting Games largely for their surface level “approachable” aspects, I always try to dig a bit deeper whenever possible. While there’s been many games over the years I’ve dreamt of attaining a greater understanding of, few have occupied as much space in my brain as Under Night. In the past it felt like a far off dream to understand the intricacies of the game, to understand something simultaneously complex and beautiful in its construction yet tragically hidden in the shadows behind passionate local communities bound by the shackles of delay-based hell. It felt impossible to slip in and catch up with everyone else in the moment, but now with the release of UNI2, I feel the spark to play and learn far more than I ever have before. For the first time in a while, the thought of going out to events big or small is alluring to me for a bit more than the usual communal aspects you tend to find with fighting games - as fun as it is to stumble into CoN5 without touching the game for months and hitting B-Tatsu in bracket without a care in the world, the drive to learn and improve for nothing more than the love of the game is something I haven’t felt as often as I’d like these days. It’s one of the many reasons I continue to show up for new fighters despite my adult life constricting the amount of time I can put into them, no other community driven games are gonna give you the same sensations as playing and learning with other community members, and that’s always a high I’ll continue to chase for the rest of my days. As much as I love falling back on old favorites, I’m so thankful companies like French Bread are still capable of lighting that spark of life within me for a new release like this. Even if you’re not into fighting games for the competitive glory or paltry prize pools of small tournaments, if you’re into the genre in literally any capacity at all, I hope this is a game that can light the spark for you too.
2024 is when I decide to really get into the game I've bounced off the most in my entire life, after two Steam refunds and multiple sneers at genre labels on the back of the box specifically tailored to kill me.
The search for the "roguelite I can tolerate the most by being as close to deterministic as possible" ends by embracing the one that is more often flaunted to be a pure RNG-fest, an exercise in putting coins into a jukebox set on "shuffle" and watching the funny lights that happen to pop out that run. Reality is, a top-down cardinal directions shooter with no iframes crutch option (shoutout to EtG) is simply a pretty strong foundation to build your game on top of, and the enemy roster more than enough supplements it with the varied slew of contact, projectile, AoE, delayed, hitscan, chasing etc. monsters threatening space as well as any good action game would.
Concessions have still been made, a noteworthy absent here is enemies anticipating and shooting towards the direction you are currently moving to, the game is clearly welcoming towards the casual gamer's proclivity towards circlestrafing while shooting inwards as the default approach (shoutout to Doom '16). By its randomly generated room nature, it can never properly contend with the handpicked enemy compositions you'd find in a regular action game. What's there is still solid at hell, and the default 1x1 rooms are small enough that their boundaries alone make good arenas to test your skill in weaving between threats, target prioritization, and all other conventional real time skills. The end result is a blazing fast sequence of densely packed encounters that rly make u think & execute before screen scroll is even over, and allow me to reiterate it's so funny this went down in history as The Luck Based One while stuff like Dead Cells me has me repeating 10 minutes of trite every time I want to see something that doesn't bore me. AND you get to put a coin in the funny jukebox too!
The gallery of inscrutably named items enriching the loot pool that make up its main form of progression are what make TBOI infamous, potentially turning your pathetic pea shooter into the most bullshit ms paint rain of death conceivable. I personally don't mind, for now (more on that later), the power gap between the run ending powerups and the purely utilitarian ones, I genuinely would enjoy the overall game much less if it allowed you to consistently become a walking AoE nuke devoid of the minutiae in spacing and fundamentals I've been rewarding with lavish praise until now - what I do enjoy is seeing how every run makes me recalibrate my mental stack on the spectrum between "positioning Isaac well to hit my enemies" and "positioning Isaac well to dodge shit", feeling like I'm really getting my money worth from apparently lame synergies that still allow me to remove either end from the equation. Some of my most successful runs aren't omg ludovico + azazel ggs we take those, but low damage regular-ass shaped projectiles Isaac having spectral, piercing, and homing, allowing me to keep my eyes glued to him and nothing else thereby maximizing evasion. I consider all of this very healthy for the skill ceiling of the game, and it turned what I initially expected to be a "low effort game for when you are sleepy" into a LOCKED IN kinda of mental effort that leaves me wanting for a cigarette, and maybe lying on the bed for a bit, after an hour and a half like the best of 'em.
... That's where my review of the game would've ended a couple of weeks or so ago, being an expanded version of my initial thoughts when I was still early in run progression, halfway through current objective of killing Mom's Heart 10 times (the second "end of run" final boss, arguably the end of the tutorial). I maybe would've added that the game needed some kind of RNG mitigation like a minimum damage floor the lower you go in floorsbecause I want to turn every game into KH2 as it's the stat that most damages a run through sheer bad luck (the game is not beyond this kind of rigging, ie Hush's light pillars are tailored against your current Speed stat so that they are always avoidable). However, the more I progress and unlock final bosses, the more the effects of a bad/unlucky run are felt.
The question that takes up increasingly bigger space in my head is, how does the game incentivize not giving up on those bad runs?
One of the most exciting things about the game is the Devil/Angel Room system. tldr, by doing no damage runs on specific floors you get rewarded with the potentially best shit in the game, starting from the second one. That's another thing I, initially, unequivocally loved, another piece of the puzzle that turns even the lamest, earliest rooms in something requiring proper finesse as bad plays quickly compound into a more miserable time than it needs to be.
If I get hit and miss out on them, my bad, right? Well yes, but no, because only RED HEART damage counts against a no damage floor, and you can find BLUE HEARTS which act like armor above your regular hearts, and, just like regular hearts, each of them takes two hits to deplete. The no hit run turned into a doable 2-hit run. Maybe you are really lucky and drop multiple blue hearts, it's now a 4/6-hit run and now you are coasting so hard it's not even funny. Maybe you get neither and gotta play it straight, and get hit at the very last second of floor 2, and oh, actually there's a pity system and the earlier you get one to spawn the faster you snowball by making others spawn next and you just missed out on all of that, and oh, the rest of the run is also going like shit, and oh, you find yourself flouride staring at the time counter wondering why you shouldn't just spam R(estart) every time you want to play the game hoping the first floor's RNG dumps a bunch of blues on your lap.
How am I incentivized to keep going instead?
From what I gather, you eventually have to gauge how well a run is going by yourself and pick a proper boss to end it. "If it's going great, try for Delirium or the Repentance content, if not, stop at Mega Satan or even the Lamb, if it really sucks cut your losses and end at Sheol/Cathedral". Or something like that. That sounds palatable NOW that I have unlocks to work towards to against any of them, but once I only the very top echelon left, what the fuck do I personally get out of ending a potential run halfway through at Cathedral? I'm the guy who least needs extrinsic rewards such as unlocks/achievements to enjoy the act of play, but 30 minutes to beat a final boss I've already done dozens of times is still 30 minutes.
What incentive do I have to stay on a run that's gonna end early and on a technicality?
I'm not gonna write a proper conclusion because this is a review I'm specifically keeping open for the inevitable reevaluation as my worries are either assuaged or confirmed by what's waiting for me ahead.
Uncharacteristically of me, I'm gonna put up a list of my pain points while I spitball solutions, which ultimately show you just can't take the fight out of the RNG hater.
1) As mentioned, put some kind of damage floor, or implement a pity system for DMG UP items, or have DMG UP on more items, or whatever needed so I don't have to look at 3.50 Damage on floor 8 (afaik the truly busted damage shit comes from specific multiplier items, not from the humble +0.4s)
2) Introduce some kind of mild pity system for bombs and keys for the first three floors (skipping out on MULTIPLE treasure rooms because you get zero (0) keys for ten minutes is just mind numbing)
3) Remove Hard Mode's changes to shops, namely that they can spawn at a lower quality level than what you currently have them upgraded at (they can't even spawn after the halfway point of a run at all, they require resources to enter, sometimes they are not a shop at all but it's a miniboss, they are not guaranteed to have stuff you want in them, is the additional dice roll really needed?)
4) Change how blue hearts interact with Devil/Anger Room chances or change how they spawn on the first floor. My most immediate idea is "just make one and only one always spawn, but hide it behind multiple layers of rocks so the player needs to choose whether it's worth consuming like three bombs when they can soldier on and try their skill instead", but people would just start Restart spamming for plentiful enough bomb drops instead. Plus characters that fly wouldn't care.
The search for the "roguelite I can tolerate the most by being as close to deterministic as possible" ends by embracing the one that is more often flaunted to be a pure RNG-fest, an exercise in putting coins into a jukebox set on "shuffle" and watching the funny lights that happen to pop out that run. Reality is, a top-down cardinal directions shooter with no iframes crutch option (shoutout to EtG) is simply a pretty strong foundation to build your game on top of, and the enemy roster more than enough supplements it with the varied slew of contact, projectile, AoE, delayed, hitscan, chasing etc. monsters threatening space as well as any good action game would.
Concessions have still been made, a noteworthy absent here is enemies anticipating and shooting towards the direction you are currently moving to, the game is clearly welcoming towards the casual gamer's proclivity towards circlestrafing while shooting inwards as the default approach (shoutout to Doom '16). By its randomly generated room nature, it can never properly contend with the handpicked enemy compositions you'd find in a regular action game. What's there is still solid at hell, and the default 1x1 rooms are small enough that their boundaries alone make good arenas to test your skill in weaving between threats, target prioritization, and all other conventional real time skills. The end result is a blazing fast sequence of densely packed encounters that rly make u think & execute before screen scroll is even over, and allow me to reiterate it's so funny this went down in history as The Luck Based One while stuff like Dead Cells me has me repeating 10 minutes of trite every time I want to see something that doesn't bore me. AND you get to put a coin in the funny jukebox too!
The gallery of inscrutably named items enriching the loot pool that make up its main form of progression are what make TBOI infamous, potentially turning your pathetic pea shooter into the most bullshit ms paint rain of death conceivable. I personally don't mind, for now (more on that later), the power gap between the run ending powerups and the purely utilitarian ones, I genuinely would enjoy the overall game much less if it allowed you to consistently become a walking AoE nuke devoid of the minutiae in spacing and fundamentals I've been rewarding with lavish praise until now - what I do enjoy is seeing how every run makes me recalibrate my mental stack on the spectrum between "positioning Isaac well to hit my enemies" and "positioning Isaac well to dodge shit", feeling like I'm really getting my money worth from apparently lame synergies that still allow me to remove either end from the equation. Some of my most successful runs aren't omg ludovico + azazel ggs we take those, but low damage regular-ass shaped projectiles Isaac having spectral, piercing, and homing, allowing me to keep my eyes glued to him and nothing else thereby maximizing evasion. I consider all of this very healthy for the skill ceiling of the game, and it turned what I initially expected to be a "low effort game for when you are sleepy" into a LOCKED IN kinda of mental effort that leaves me wanting for a cigarette, and maybe lying on the bed for a bit, after an hour and a half like the best of 'em.
... That's where my review of the game would've ended a couple of weeks or so ago, being an expanded version of my initial thoughts when I was still early in run progression, halfway through current objective of killing Mom's Heart 10 times (the second "end of run" final boss, arguably the end of the tutorial). I maybe would've added that the game needed some kind of RNG mitigation like a minimum damage floor the lower you go in floors
The question that takes up increasingly bigger space in my head is, how does the game incentivize not giving up on those bad runs?
One of the most exciting things about the game is the Devil/Angel Room system. tldr, by doing no damage runs on specific floors you get rewarded with the potentially best shit in the game, starting from the second one. That's another thing I, initially, unequivocally loved, another piece of the puzzle that turns even the lamest, earliest rooms in something requiring proper finesse as bad plays quickly compound into a more miserable time than it needs to be.
If I get hit and miss out on them, my bad, right? Well yes, but no, because only RED HEART damage counts against a no damage floor, and you can find BLUE HEARTS which act like armor above your regular hearts, and, just like regular hearts, each of them takes two hits to deplete. The no hit run turned into a doable 2-hit run. Maybe you are really lucky and drop multiple blue hearts, it's now a 4/6-hit run and now you are coasting so hard it's not even funny. Maybe you get neither and gotta play it straight, and get hit at the very last second of floor 2, and oh, actually there's a pity system and the earlier you get one to spawn the faster you snowball by making others spawn next and you just missed out on all of that, and oh, the rest of the run is also going like shit, and oh, you find yourself flouride staring at the time counter wondering why you shouldn't just spam R(estart) every time you want to play the game hoping the first floor's RNG dumps a bunch of blues on your lap.
How am I incentivized to keep going instead?
From what I gather, you eventually have to gauge how well a run is going by yourself and pick a proper boss to end it. "If it's going great, try for Delirium or the Repentance content, if not, stop at Mega Satan or even the Lamb, if it really sucks cut your losses and end at Sheol/Cathedral". Or something like that. That sounds palatable NOW that I have unlocks to work towards to against any of them, but once I only the very top echelon left, what the fuck do I personally get out of ending a potential run halfway through at Cathedral? I'm the guy who least needs extrinsic rewards such as unlocks/achievements to enjoy the act of play, but 30 minutes to beat a final boss I've already done dozens of times is still 30 minutes.
What incentive do I have to stay on a run that's gonna end early and on a technicality?
I'm not gonna write a proper conclusion because this is a review I'm specifically keeping open for the inevitable reevaluation as my worries are either assuaged or confirmed by what's waiting for me ahead.
Uncharacteristically of me, I'm gonna put up a list of my pain points while I spitball solutions, which ultimately show you just can't take the fight out of the RNG hater.
1) As mentioned, put some kind of damage floor, or implement a pity system for DMG UP items, or have DMG UP on more items, or whatever needed so I don't have to look at 3.50 Damage on floor 8 (afaik the truly busted damage shit comes from specific multiplier items, not from the humble +0.4s)
2) Introduce some kind of mild pity system for bombs and keys for the first three floors (skipping out on MULTIPLE treasure rooms because you get zero (0) keys for ten minutes is just mind numbing)
3) Remove Hard Mode's changes to shops, namely that they can spawn at a lower quality level than what you currently have them upgraded at (they can't even spawn after the halfway point of a run at all, they require resources to enter, sometimes they are not a shop at all but it's a miniboss, they are not guaranteed to have stuff you want in them, is the additional dice roll really needed?)
4) Change how blue hearts interact with Devil/Anger Room chances or change how they spawn on the first floor. My most immediate idea is "just make one and only one always spawn, but hide it behind multiple layers of rocks so the player needs to choose whether it's worth consuming like three bombs when they can soldier on and try their skill instead", but people would just start Restart spamming for plentiful enough bomb drops instead. Plus characters that fly wouldn't care.
